I didn't expect to be posting in here so soon, but my current 775 rig decided to toss a bluescreen and refuse to post. Trying to swing a replacement proc to see if the proc or mobo went to the magic smoke graveyard in the sky. Being as my current rig is 4+ years old now and if my board is hosed, might as well start looking at what is out there and get a JAE build to get some ideas. Going to keep my current case, PSU, and hard drives/DVD burners, so all I will really need is Processor, Motherboard, memory, and possibly Video card.

In case anyone needs to know, have a PCPaC 700W PSU and a 6950 2 gig video card, also space isn't an issue as I have a Lian Li PC-70 full tower case.

2x4 GiB or 2x8 GiB of PC3-12800 memory is priced reasonably at $5 to $7½ per GiB. I'd pick a set that operated at no higher voltage than 1.5V (lower is better) and no higher latency than CAS 9 (lower is better).

Well I have more or less decided to bite the bullet and upgrade...been looking at 1155 boards for the last few hours. I more or less decided to go with the i5 3570k..which was an easy choice...the motherboard choice has not been so easy. It seems like there are a thousand Z77 boards out there to pick from. I am mostly looking for one that has a PS/2 port, at least one PCI slot, and at least 8 Sata ports. Oh and something in the 150-200 range pricewise and yes I want to be able to OC. Please help me JAE so my poor head doesnt explode

Nope still got my trusty old CRT lol, and not dropping the cash on a SSD yet...trying to keep this upgrade from breaking the bank. Trying to get this done for a reasonable price and worrying about the other issues down the road.

When you've got a shiny new motherboard and a new OS install to do is a great time to switch to an SSD. At less than $1 per GB, a 128 GB drive shouldn't break the bank. If you were thinking of dropping more than $400 on a new graphics card, why does the price of the SSD make you hesitate?

Even high-quality CRTs like my old Viewsonic P95f+ and PF815 look shabby next to a good IPS LCD monitor like the UltraSharp U2410.

I already have raptor, although old is fast enough for my needs, I am not of the OMG my computer hasn't booted up in 5 seconds crowd. As for my monitor, I have a sony FW990 24in widescreen CRT, and it pretty well smokes most LCDS still and is 16:10 to boot. I am also just reusing the video card I have so no upgrade on that front.

Welp, I might as well chime in. Buy an SSD. I went from a Raptor to an SSD myself and it is night and day. The SSD blows that thing out of the chassis. If nothing else, buy a 64GB SSD like I did and use the large drive for storage/Game/Program installs. I keep Windows, a few apps and 2 often played games on the SSD.

Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"

JustAnEngineer wrote: Even high-quality CRTs look shabby next to a good IPS LCD monitor like the UltraSharp U2410.

You are talking high-quality; his Sony is uber to the max quality. Pretty much the pinnacle of CRTs when it came out.

I'll agree that the Sony GDM-FW900 monitor was near the top of CRT technology twelve years ago. The Viewsonic P95f+ was a very good 19" aperture grill CRT monitor. The PF815 was an even older 22" model.

After taking some time to play around with my old rig...looks like the video card in it is dead. Sending in for a RMA...but still going to upgrade...no time like the present. After looking at aftermarket coolers, there are a lot of them out there, so what seems to work the best for my fellow gerbils?

I was, just seeing if there were any other ones my fellow gerbils liked besides that one. I am already spending the money to get a new rig so I am willing to spend more if it will get me a better quality cooler. The reason being, I looked at the coolermaster one and the hold downs looked really flimsy, so I wanted to see what else people have used.

I have a Hyper 212 Pro. I bought a i5 SB, a Z68 mobo, the cooler, and some random bits a few months back, when my 1366 rig was getting unusably wobbly. I ended up taking the i5 and Z68 back, but kept the 212 despite not having a CPU to put it on at that moment. It's a very, very nice piece of metal, with a very low pricetag, and the mounting is very flexible. Daddy like.

LGA775 is different. LGA 1155 and 1156 are the same. Some aftermarket heatsink mounting plates get around this by having clever offset plastic inserts that adjust the hole spacing to match but use the same metal plate for both sockets.